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Forums - PC Discussion - I just downloaded Opera

Plaupius on 20 July 2008
Gnizmo said:
Played_Out said:

 

There is one thing you didn't take into consideration with that comparison:

"Hardware; 800 MHz Intel Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM"

Opera performs better in this scenario because it has less demanding system requirements. On a decent computer, Firefox will perform better under most conditions. Anyone that has a computer bought in the last couple of years and requires flexibility would be better off using Firefox.

Also, comparing Opera 9.2 to Firefox 3 is obviously an unfair comparison. Opera's market penetration is clearly much lower than that of Firefox.

 That set-up will more than meet the requirments for any browser. You could repeat the test on any viable PC today and get the exact same results. I can't even understand why you would think a web browser would be limited on that set-up let alone why you think only Firefox would get a performance boost. Opera is an amazingly fast and efficient browser that just never got popular.

Exactly. It is insane to claim that because Opera doesn't have as high system requirements, it somehow wouldn't perform faster on a faster computer. The fact is, backed by a few speed tests, that Opera 9.5 is one of the fastest browsers, with only Firefox 3 outperforming it in some areas while in other areas Opera 9.5 outperformed it. Other browsers more or less come behind those two.

I have been using Opera since version 5 or 6, I can't quite remember anymore, but I liked it so much I even paid for an ad-free version when it was still adware. Truth be told, other browsers have caught up a lot in the recent years, but as an overall package Opera IMO wins hands down. Sure, you can do more with Firefox extensions that with widgets (I believe) and there are some extensions that I would love to see replicated in Opera, but Opera is ready out of the box, it has a really nice mail client, an usable irc-client, built-in bittorrent client, built-in mouse gestures, tab previews, speed dial, fit-to-width-button (IMO this is WONDERFUL!!!), zoom, possiblity to easily change between different style sheets, good in-page-search (IMO better than what's in FF2), the UI is very easily customizable to your liking, and it has a notes-feature that's really really really handy. Plus a host of other features.

I consider Opera to be a power-user's browser, and IMO it has always been that. Once you learn to use the functionalities it has, it's a pain to switch to another browser. The only thing I dislike about the Opera devs is that they keep changing the UI and keyboard shortcuts for every major release, but luckily they keep the option of retaining the old shortcuts so it's not as bad as it might sound.